


start here

by anomalousity



Series: you took the words right out of my mouth [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2322860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalousity/pseuds/anomalousity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When is a monster not a monster?</p><p>Oh, when you love it.</p>
            </blockquote>





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One of the funniest things about being lost is knowing that you do have a home to return to.

It’s an oddity, surely, but it’s there. When you’re lost, you know that you’re not in the place you’re supposed to be. So, where is it that you’re supposed to be? That must be home. At least, that’s what he hopes is true, because he’d be setting himself up for all sorts of disappointment if that weren’t true.

The file had called him James Buchanan Barnes; it said he was from Brooklyn.

Vaguely, he can remember it. Teeming streets with vendors and working gals and paper boys and angry old people yelling at the hooligans disturbing their peace; it’s all there, but there’s a disconnect. Where there should be familiarity there is only an empty space beside him. Where there should be a warm smile and charcoal encrusted hands there is only quietness and a flash of red before nothingness.

He wanders the empty streets, though are they ever really empty?

It’s three in the morning and a dame asked him if he wanted to have a good time. He’d said no, but pointed her in the direction of an all hours breakfast place that doesn’t exist anymore. She gives him a strange look before telling him to go fuck himself. Funny, he thinks, that she was offering to do the same thing and is turning it around on him when he doesn’t take the offer.

Loneliness. There’s some of that. Cold; a _lot_ of that. He doesn’t know what happened after he fished the not-so-skinny kid out of the Potomac, but he knows that he’s done some bad shit. He knows that he’s moved well past the realm of monster and into something far more sinister.

Natalia told him that he wasn’t a monster when he started remembering in the nineties. He’d tried to believe her, but she could tell that it was bullshit. Two weeks ago, she’d said that he wasn’t a monster, and he’d just missed her heart by two inches. He didn’t get the opportunity to apologize yet, but how does anyone even apologize for that?

He kicks at the dust and looks up at the building that used to be a couple stories smaller and a whole lot grungier. Nowadays, it’s a historical allude to Captain America, and of course, James Buchanan Barnes, childhood friend and comrade of the Captain.

It’s sort of difficult, he decides, to start thinking of yourself as something besides a machine and as an actual person with actual thoughts and relationships. Maybe there was something about the Captain that had offset some screw in his head. Maybe it was Pierce and Zola’s programming. Whatever the case, he’s not eager to repeat it.

The man standing at the door looks tired. He rucks up his jacket a bit when you step in close, watching for some kind of reaction. His eyes are judgmental when they sweep over your grungy clothing and ratty hair. It isn’t your fault, you tell yourself; showers are hard to come by.

“Are you visiting?” the man asks, sighing as he straightens his jacket and his posture.

“Yeah,” he replies. “An old pal o’ mine.”

“Great, what’s your name?”

He swallows and says bleakly, “James Buchanan Barnes.”

*

When is a monster not a monster?

“Oh,” the soft voice had said into the skin of his chest. “When you love it.”

Steven Grant Rogers, codename: Captain America, was enhanced during Project Rebirth. For the majority of his life, Rogers was sickly and frail, standing only 5’4’’ and 95-lbs soaking wet. For the last year or so, he was an impressive 6’2’’ and 220-lbs. James doesn’t remember this manifestation of the boy who was his best friend, but he does remember the frailness.

And his delicate hands, the gentle sweep of his cheekbones, the soft cadence of his voice, the warmth lurking low in his eyes whenever he regarded Bucky and so on and so forth.

He remembers comparing his best friend to Frankenstein. But is he the monster or is he the victim? Rogers certainly saw it as an opportunity but that didn’t mean anything. James figures that he’s a monster, but he knows you don’t need to volunteer to be mangled into something so terrible and unrecognizable that even your best friend can’t recognize you by build and eyes alone.

“You sayin’ you love me, punk?” Bucky had asked a lifetime ago. Steve’s hair was soft on his lips, his chest a warm line against Bucky’s front.

“Shut up, Barnes.”

He didn’t tell James that he wasn’t a monster, but he didn’t agree with Bucky’s unspoken assertion either. When is a monster not a monster?

Never. A monster is always a monster; its qualities only show when it’s desperate or pushed.

*

“Roses are red…”

“Violets are blue…?”

“I’m fuckin’ tired.”

“Me too.”

Steve collapsed face first against Bucky, boxers half off, dick half hard, and body halfway to rem sleep.

*

The apartment would look the same, if it weren’t for the neighborhood.

It wasn’t hard for him to break in; obviously the current tenant could care less about robbery, otherwise they’d’ve bothered to lock their front door and windows. Or, he supposes, they didn’t expect an expatriate assassin to scale the outside walls of the building up to the fifteenth floor and jimmy the lock open with a hair pin he’d found beside a dumpster.

He thinks it’s pretty standard. Wide bed pushed in the middle of the room. Bedside table, lamp, copy of _War and Peace_ resting face down atop the table. A part of James screams that the binding is going to get ruined, and a part of Bucky chastises Steve for being so damn careless, that it’d cost him five cents they couldn’t afford…

“Who’s there?” someone asks.

The voice is very similar to how it used to be, but more terse. Hardened, perhaps. Bucky screams at him, James informs him, but he does nothing. He stares at the book, at the wrinkled binding and the crooked pages. He doesn’t fail to miss the reading glasses, same silver lining as they used to have, resting on the table beside a glass of water.

“The enhancements gave you perfect eyesight,” he says even though he wants to ask him who he is. “And those were never yours.”

“No, they weren’t.” The Captain’s footsteps are light despite his heavy girth. The floorboards don’t even creak as he gets closer, leaving only the soft rustle of his clothes as he walks as a warning. “You remember?”

“Some,” he replies. A lot, he doesn’t.

“Some,” The Captain echoes.

I remember you, he thinks. I remember your hands on my back and your mouth on my own. I remember kicking ass like no one’s god damn business and carrying you back from the docks whenever one of the boys would get too rough and you’d have an attack. I remember you giving me a little band of fool’s gold and saying you’ll buy the real thing when I get back.

Instead you turn and nod.

The Captain looks a lot like Steve. Same eyes, same pouty lips, same persistent frown. Different cheeks, however. Jaw’s a little more prominent, brow a little more severe. The hair is clipped to military regulation, unlike James’, and of course, there’s the hulking body.

His eyes look over James’ body too, and he knows he’s cataloguing the changes. He looks back up into your eyes with soft eyes and that same soft smile that slowly curves his lips, and eventually overtakes his features.

He looks different, but he’s the same.

“Hey, Stevie,” you say, managing a small grin of your own. “Ever get the real ring?”

*

When is a monster not a monster?

“Oh,” you say. “When I love you.”

He looks at you with those wide blue eyes of his and smiles, gets down on his bigger-than-should-be-possible knee and takes your hand. You don’t bite your lip when he slips the modest gold band on your ring finger, but you do smile a bit when it fits perfectly.

When is a monster not a monster? Bucky thinks.

Steve blinks up at him before kissing his knuckles and pushing back to his feet. Once he’s up he kisses Bucky’s face too, and his lips, and his nose, and his jaw, and his hair. He’s still got a couple inches on Bucky, still a good fifty pounds heavier, not factoring in the weight of the arm, still a good thousand shades better.

He smiles and leans up to kiss Steve’s ear.

Maybe a monster isn’t a monster when it finds another monster. Maybe it’s when a monster falls in love, or when someone falls in love with the monster.

“When is a monster not a monster?” Steve asks, soft and breathy into his hair, like he used to before everything changed.

“When I love you,” Bucky replies.

**Author's Note:**

> AGH I haven't posted in a while, but I'll start trying to write more. Thanks for reading!
> 
> [Yell](http://buckybaarnes.co.vu) at me on tumblr.


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